There’s this moment of pure, unconcealed confusion when I smile at the waiter and say “table for one, please”. “Only one?” is usually the shocked response. And I’m familiar with that shocked response; I got the same one, a hundred times over, when I told everyone back home “Yes, Cambodia. Yes, on my own”. Because we’re a world of fan-pages for celebrities’ relationships, we’re rom-coms and thinking we can’t exist outside of another. And I know, one of the most powerful energies in the universe is people, together. But there’s also beauty beyond words in a life unchaperoned. When you stand out in the world, at bliss in your oneness, you evolve.

Every Monday, I am greeted by smiling faces, with the ritual “what did you do with your weekend, teacher?” After telling them, the recurrent answer is “you’re so brave, teacher”. But I’m not brave; I’m restless. How could I ever rest in a world where who and what we can be, is not even invented yet? How can I rest knowing that I can do or be absolutely anything in the universe? And I refuse to lie dormant because others don’t want to join. We infinitely limit ourselves with the belief that life begins with another. Life begins, first and foremost, the moment we tune in to it. When you realize that your life isn’t accident or coincidence, you start to live better. What happens to you, where you go, what you do; it’s all on you. So why are we all overflowing with fear?

Why don’t we sit at a table for one and smile, instead of pretending we’re waiting for someone or putting our head down? Why can’t we be as excited to say we’re single as we are to say we’re engaged? Why can’t we stand up and be the badasses of our own lives, without waiting for someone to rescue us? Because what we’re not told, what’s not in the fairytales, is that nobody is. Nobody’s coming in on a white horse. We’ve got to ride it out ourselves. We’re teaching women everywhere that their importance relies on a question, on a “will you be my girlfriend?”, a “will you be my wife?”. You don’t need someone to be someone. But we’re implanting this fear of solitude to keep people rooted in never pursuing their power. Fear is what keeps us immobilized in ordinary. You need to welcome fear. You need to seize seclusion.

And I’m not a cynic. Life was made from love and was made to be lived in it. But the reality is, you can only meet people as deeply as you’ve met yourself. When you fill your time with you, solo, the time then spent with others transcends everything you’ve known- when you’re better, your relationships will be too. We need to know we can live outside the lines. We need to stop clasping on to the detrimental and the entrapping, just to have somebody by your side. Stop fearing oneness. Ask for a table for one; and own it. Buy yourself flowers. Book a flight with one seat. Dive into the part of yourself, the world told you doesn’t exist. And just see, first-hand, the level of enchantment that comes to fruition with your evolution.

I’ve never been ballsy. I never crossed the road without the green man. I wouldn’t walk on street cracks or over four drains. I never looked at a magpie without dreading the bad luck they bring. Like so many people, I was comfortable. Always chasing safe. We’ve become so good at walls and barriers in the illusion of safety. But the walls and the barriers don’t keep danger away; they keep life away. Your transformation won’t come if you choose to stay in your cocoon. Things don’t change until we do.

So I had to change. Because I wasn’t made for a life of fear, a life of watching where I walk, a life of looking down and not looking at the sky. I wasn’t made for not knowing freedom. I was made for leaping into life and all her magic. So I jumped on a plane (a few actually, including stopovers), out in the world, solo. People always talk about ‘safety in numbers’ and yeah, sometimes it’s necessary, but nothing in the world compares to living your freedom and knowing it’s scary but you’re out here and you’re doing it. I’ve surprised myself a lot in the past week; venturing past the limits of the barriers I created. I checked into a hotel without nobody’s hand to hold but mine. I wandered into the desert in Dubai, completely on my own with a man I’ve never met. I took the handle bars of a quad, when I’ve only known being a passenger. I drifted around the hustle and bustle of the streets of Phnom Penh, my new home for the next few months. I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, out in the unknown doing things deemed unsafe. But I’m in a place I’ve never been before, doing things I’ve never done, feeling things I’ve never felt; my freedom is here in the flesh. I’m on a new level of life, that only came from releasing myself from the safety net I was captured in.

I met a woman on the first flight and we talked about life. She spoke of her small ‘safe’ town up North. This ‘safe’ town that tossed her out on the streets in her time of need. This ‘safe’ town that she was raped in. Safety is an illusion to keep you blind from being alive. We all want to be safe but no matter how any layers of bubble-wrap you cover yourself in, it’s never guaranteed. So you might as well make the jump from comfortable to where you actually want to be, despite the danger. Life was never made to be straight and narrow. It was meant to be wild and open to wherever you wanted to take it. You can walk through life with your eyes closed to the dark but you need to accept that you’re closing your eyes on the light too. Life in comfortable, is accepting a medium level of life. And if that’s all you want then yeah cool, enjoy it but there is so much world out there, so much life that you don’t know what you’re wasting.

I can stand up and say that I actively chose my life. And I can say that I would do it a hundred times over. The path has been mucky and uneasy sometimes but I don’t regret a single thing that has led me to liberation. Because this feeling; of release, of power is the compass leading me in the direction of my soul. I’m proud of the person I’ve become because I had to fight to become her. I had to be the least independent person, anchored down by the weight of her fear to unravel the layers of my cocoon, so I could fly openly into the arms of freedom. Out into the beautiful world of unsafe.

Today I woke up and smiled. My day had just been born- nothing had happened yet but I smiled. It was different; it was the kind of smile that felt fluid. I felt it flowing through my mind, washing my crown to my root, and soaking my soul. Why? Because everyday life finds new ways for me to fall in love with her. I’m so humbled that someone in the sky, be it God, angels or energy, let this be my life. But this overwhelming gratitude only rose to the surface when I did. I started apologizing less and becoming more of what I wanted to be. When I think of two year ago me or even six month ago me, the word “shrunk” is not far behind. A shrunken version of myself, consistently striving for validation and petrified of ever appearing anyway dissimilar to the crowd. But I was never made for the multitude. And I had to fail in trying before I could find peace in stumbling down the untravelled path. I’m wired differently, and honestly that’s okay for me now. But the more I stand up in harmony with myself, the more universe applauds me for doing so.

The neglected reality for a lot of people is they don’t know how to be comfortable with themselves because they’ve never been taught to. We’ve become a generation of comparison and, honestly, it’s destroying us. We’re all on a quest for originality while copying and pasting the lives of others into ours. We’re compromising ourselves to fit in but that fitting in is inevitably shrinking. Shrinking all the weird and wonderful aspects of ourselves that make us who we are. For a long time I was so afraid of my mind and I tried with everything inside me to conceal it. But even if you’re the greatest fighter in the world, you can’t fight what you are- when you go head to head with your soul, you can’t win because a soul doesn’t have an ego to fall victim to. There wasn’t one moment of miracle, of epiphany. One by one, I removed a bar off my cage and before I knew it I had transformed to freedom.

I presented myself apologetically to the world. And then the weirdest thing happened. The world presented all the people, all the things I needed. There was a moment of clarity where the white noise faded away and the calm set in. I expected to face critique but knew it wouldn’t break me, for I had detoxed myself from the validation that once ran through my veins. The world didn’t boo me, it stood with me, cheering. A movement of powerful people and events made their way into my life. And the ones who didn’t stand, were the ones that couldn’t; the ones that were crippled with not listening to their life purpose. You soul speaks a language that only you can understand- you just have to actually listen. I’ve wanted to make a difference in the world ever since I realized it needed it. I would never have the ability to do so if I remained cocooned. I am making a distinct imprint on the world because I am the driver of my life.

I’ve come to a point where I feel like I’m sitting on top of the mountain after conquering it. I’m done with masking, and fear and just not embracing my mind and my purpose. I have something within me that nobody else does. Everybody does. There is an omnipresent magic in the universe, in that it is within all of us. It is exclusive, however, because it’s never made of the same material. When you rise to the surface, life and all the people in it reward you. Life wants to be lived, demands it. So I don’t mind if I’m not for everyone. I don’t mind if my life isn’t one of conventional methods. I don’t mind if I speak in energy and live with soul because I’ve never been so in control. I’m excited to be alive everyday. I don’t regret anything that brought me to the here and now because I am living vividly, standing at ease with my self.

Let’s face the reality; coins will always be two-sided. As many things seem in this world; “right” and “wrong”, yes or no. But life is seven billion sided. No two eyes have experienced the same shade of life, no two minds can perceive things on the same level. My right is so many people’s wrong. At current, I am not a prisoner to my mind (and have not been since I heard the voice of my soul) and I am so privileged that that allows me to encounter life as an open jar. The glass is always half full, the grass is only greener where I water it. I am unrestricted in my mind; I am free. But freedom is nothing if you can’t hold keys to other’s handcuffs and chains. What’s been in my mind, doing spirals at the forefront, for the last few months is a topic that sets me alight because I am so filled with passion in relation to it but is also a topic of great sensitivity. If you are incapable of stretching your mind, even temporarily, to see life outside the box and realise that your right may actually be wrong, I ask you to please click the little x on your screen, forget you visited and scroll aimlessly through social media.

Ireland, the beautiful little island I call home, is war-torn at the moment because people have altering views of right and wrong. People are battling over yes or no on whether or not Irish women should have the right to a safe, legal abortion. See the thing with right and wrong is that never means the same thing to two people. I believe in a lot of things (angels, aliens you name it) but above all I believe in the power of people and the power of unity. I believe it only causes one person for a chain reaction; you can stand up and actively be the change. In my hippie mentality I just think if you tune into the frequency of your soul it will tell you what to do, it will lead you to the place you need to be, whether that’s an abortion clinic or a single parent support group. For most things I have the attitude of “if you want something do it, if you don’t, don’t” but abortion isn’t something that anyone actually wants. It’s not something little girls learn about and think I can’t wait to be a grown up and have an abortion. Mainly, because it’s not talked about and the taboo of women being the leading participants in their own lives is a stale taste in the mouths of the narrow-minded. But also, because we are so busy teaching girls the need to be mothers that we misplace them as humans. People with needs, people with goals. We don’t need to be someone’s to be someone.

I’m not slating anyone who chooses the “traditional” route of marriage and kids. If it’s for you then that’s great and I’m so happy for you. But if being a bad ass career woman is for you then cool, let that be for you.And if balancing both is for you then amazing. I’m not pro-abortion, I’m not. But I am so pro-living; living the life you design and for some people two lines on a stick is the biggest obstruction of that. Some people aren’t made to be parents and sometimes it’s just not the right time. How many children are stuck in misery because they didn’t ask to be born and their parents didn’t want them to be? How many teen suicides have been caused because of the absence of parental love? Your parents have the capacity to destroy you more than anything in this world. Child neglect and abuse is something that everyone likes to think doesn’t happen but just like abortion, it does.

Nobody is voting yes to have “unrestricted abortions” as the propaganda of the pro-lifers would mislead you to believe. All the women in the country aren’t going to stop taking the pill and tell their sexual partners to just stop wearing condoms. Society has taken colossal strides forward and in this day and age, I would like to give our powerful women and people more credit than that. It is a last resort but we need to repeal so that women can be supported and aided medically and emotionally by their own country and not shamed and shipped off to somewhere else. Just because it’s not happening here doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It means that the people a no will affect the most are the vulnerable; the poor, the young, the victims and the ill. As much as you might oppose abortion it has always and will always happen. The successful woman, climbing the career ladder, who just isn’t ready or who had the wrong partner will still access an abortion if that is what she decides because she can. The petrified fifteen year old with no income and no support, however, can’t because her country has failed her and made her another statistic of underage mothers. Abortion happens and we don’t want it to be the normal thing, we don’t want unrestricted abortions. We want women making a decision for their own life, no matter what their circumstance, to have the right to safety and support in their time of need. We’re not voting for abortions on demand; they will still need to payed for but it just removes the added expense of flights, accommodation and hassle for a woman cast-away by her country.

It’s 2018 and we need to stop living in the past. Religion doesn’t have the grasp of the people it once used to. Boys kiss boys now. Women take charge. Girls play with trucks and boys play with barbies. We care about things, and we should. We should be getting passionate, we should be standing up projecting our voices. We should be rebelling and revolutionizing. We should be making the change. All across the world women are being told how to be a woman and what that means. You are not less if you don’t have children. You are not less if abortion is required for your situation. You are not less because you are a women and it’s about time we open the minds of the trapped. You are less if you choose to be misled, misinformed or remain oblivious. Educate yourself. There is an endless list of information to avail of online (one particularly great website for distinguishing facts from myth is abortionrightscampaign.ie). Please don’t lay back and watch the ill-informed tell us what we need.

On the 22nd of May 2015 Ireland was on the right side of history when they made same sex marriage legal. On the 28th of March 2018 they were on the wrong side of history when they shamed a woman, who was a victim, using her voice. Whatever your views on right and wrong, you cannot deny that allowing someone the right to choose their life is the right thing to do. On the 25th of May 2018 please be on the right side and make so many proud to call this place home. Lets spread unity and support over fear and hate. Let’s show the citizens of this country that we care. Let’s show them they are not somebody else’s problem but just someone who needs our help. Please make the informed decision to repeal, you might just save a life.

There’s been a significant shift in my manifestations in recent times. I had spent so many weeks in the waiting place of my life, that it was starting to feel like home. Life was happening but I wasn’t. I was begging the universe for results and coming up empty handed over and over. But the universe will only take you to the outskirts of where you want to go; you have to find the destination within and for yourself. All the universe was conspiring to tell me that the bricks of the path I followed were paved for someone else. There’s only so long that you can be passive in your life before you start to realise you’re dying. The universe wasn’t giving me what I wanted because I wasn’t doing what I wanted. It was time for me to get off the bench and start-over at the forefront of my life.

I left an institution that was a catalyst to my soul’s destruction. I evaluated and took action. I finally listened to the voice inside me and seen she had been crying out all along. I trusted her to take me wherever it was the universe was leading. And the thing is all the obstacles, all the complications, frustrations, and setbacks all dissolve when you decide to hold the power of your life in your palms. When you become an active participant in your life beautiful things unfold and you start to too. Life is a masterpiece but to truly live- that is art in it’s purest form. And honestly, loving myself enough to be brave and follow my spirit is day by day designing the life that were merely clouds in my head at that awkward, in-between.

There’s a common misconception between freedom and happiness. Everyone wants “happiness” but they’re unresolved in its meaning. There will always be happiness. We breathe it in daily. But just like the air we breathe in, it must also be exhaled. That doesn’t decrease its value. Freedom is the compilation of those moments to the point of complete fresh air. Freedom is being happy in the downcast and the knowledge that all will become right. Freedom is forgetting its Monday morning because it feels like Saturday night. Freedom is knowing yourself, loving yourself, trusting, and backing yourself. Freedom is jumping into life and understanding she has a trampoline waiting for you at the bottom.

Your life begins when you are bold enough to be brave in the execution.

Being a water sign, it’s hard for my eyes to not fill with emotion as I stand under the world ready for the beginning of the new orbit. This day overwhelms me and so it’s difficult to join the dots of my mind, to form a picture that makes sense. I’ve never had a ‘bad year’; and not in the way that all the moments that formed my 365 were all void of obstacles because the objects the universe left in the way of my path led me onto my true one, but since tuning in to the frequency of my soul, I have learned to deflect my focus to design the year; the life I desire. This year has taken me to a lot of places, a lot of thoughts I’m thankful for, and a lot of magic moments. But above all, it has taken me to a place, within myself, where I have listened to my spirit and am now fluent in the language it speaks. I have become attentive to the universe around me but also to the universe within me. And because of this awareness, my life is my new favourite colour. My life is the book I’ve been waiting to read. My soul is the pilot of the places I’ve been and the places I’ll go, the things I’ve done and all the things left to do.

There are countless people stumbling on, down the course they believe has been mapped out for them since childhood. The reality is, there is no map. We’re all just fumbling around, in a whirlwind of confusion, trying to find the ‘right’ way. Only when the exterior becomes a mumble in the distance and the voice on the inside is all that remains, will we get to where we’re meant to be; only then, will we be going the ‘right’ way. You need to hear your soul song, and sing it. Open your eye to the universe unfolding within you. And around you. Your thoughts are the paintbrushes that decorate your life’s canvas. And this year, this life can be so much more than a map. You can follow your self to a place, a place that remains undiscovered by any atlas. Follow your soul. Let the universes take you blindfolded into the unknown.

I hope this year you travel; travel into yourself so much that you become your favourite destination. I hope you learn a new language; the language that your soul speaks- and that you speak it so fluently and naturally that you never utter the words of the outside world. I hope you find love; find love in the all the parts of yourself that you never have before. I hope you find your soulmate; a soulmate in the universe and full faith that she will always take you to the the life you’re meant for. I hope your year is so full of transformation. I hope you are all happy and healthy with hearts brimming.

After those first few toddler-wobbles, our feet are quite reliable in their methodical movement. So don’t watch your walk; your feet will take you where you need to go without supervision. Don’t walk looking down. Because you will bump into things. But, principally, when you’re ground-watching you miss the sky, the trees; life and all the beauty layered within it. Things happen when you look up to life. Whether the sun’s glowing or the rain’s rinsing you skin, look up and see. See life. Life isn’t something that is done to us, it’s not a punishment or a chore. Life is happening to all of us; in 7 billion different ways. If that doesn’t make you feel alive, then you don’t understand the feeling. I know people that have lived fifty years and haven’t been alive for a minute of them.

There’s a distinction between looking up and looking forward. Looking forward is the easy part; we all do it. “Tomorrow I will go”, “in five years I will be”, “the day I die”. We live our lives as forward-facing lists. And we’re so obsessed with the terminal that the view on the way passes us by. I’m guilty too, I’m not saying I’m not. The foundation visions boards I made, had no vision. And I examine them from time to time, to reminisce, some things attained, some not even close. That’s besides the point, because I am so indebted to that which elapsed me- life knew what I needed and knew it wasn’t that- but the whole process of becoming and being was all born from this. I started to open my mind to the fact that when I open my mind to what life can be, it starts to be. This is what being alive feels like- it’s fire, and dancing, and art, and magic. It’s having vision to a new world that you once wore blinkers in. Life transcands what we want to cross off our list of forwards. When you look up, you notice the periphery. And sometimes the sidelines contain more life than the straight. Everyone is living different lives and all have individual guidelines of what that should be but no amount of guidelines and instructions can bring you the life you’re meant for. Many times, taking a moment to pause, right where you are, to look up can be ten times more advantageous than the steps taken to go forward. Plans can often be pencil not permanent.

Today my physical body is weak. But as I sit here wanting to rip my skin off and puffing on ventolin, struggling to breathe, I feel so blessed because today my mind isn’t struggling. Today my mind is healthy. Today, I’m not paralysed with the prospect of having a conversation. Today, I’m not pulling at the threads of myself until I unravel. Today is a day that the weights of my mind have been lifted and I feel strong. The mind is not solid but fluid- it can be strong one day and weak the next, it can be heavy or it can be a cloud of lightness. It digresses and flows through the meanders of the days our thoughts are our soulmates and the days they feel like a stranger. No mind is fully ill or well, as with the body it comes in phases. I have been broken by life. By people. Only when I was glued together with love did I know true healing. You’ve got to fill the cracks, dents and bruises of your mind with love, and joy, and peace and all those other emotions your bad days tell you don’t deserve. When you can’t see past the fog of your own mind, find solace in the fact that one day is not your reality, it is not your truth. One feeling doesn’t define you. You are not an illness. You don’t have to agree with that self-talk that lowers your vibration. You can be your own hero. You can lift yourself and free yourself from adversity. It doesn’t have to be any way you don’t want it to be.

You’ll have to fight life and you’ll have to fight the villains of your mind. The road feels long, and many times lonely but every moment you continue, every time you carry on is another demon you relinquish because you can’t be beaten. The paths we walk weren’t created in a world that’s just our own; they intertwine and connect with those of other wanderers and travellers. These people, on all the different paths of their own, are all humans like you. Never underestimate the power of humans. Never underestimate the power of humanity. Hellos can save lives. Smiles can save souls. The kindness and empathy of people is without bounds. There is always someone willing and eager to lift you when you can’t make the jump on your own. When we lift each other we can all rise together. Be someone’s hero. Save a life. Outstretch a hand to the ones who need it the most. Wrap people in the blanket of your kindness. Share love. Be light.

An alarm wasn’t set. There was no path carved in stone. Sometimes you need to forget the to-do list and just be. I knew I was going to open my eyes today and flow with the day; whatever came, I would let it. And I’m strolling down the road, watching the shades of my mind make art- I’m feeling good and thinking better. And of course I probably should have been a little more tuned into reality as I try to cross the road. A tiny step off the path after proceeding to the wrong green light and there’s a horn beeping and a man cursing. So, naturally, there’s a little part of myself consenting his curses as accurate. And then I have the moment. The moment I live for- that one second of transformation that you assess a situation and simply choose to disagree. Anything can change in a second.

That man, whoever he is, fell victim to the dynamic second. Yes, I was at fault but he let one second defeat him. He threw hate into the world and because of that he’s probably somewhere cursing the road for him being late, cursing the woman in a shop slowing him down, cursing the universe for this shit-show of a day he’s having. That’s not on me. That’s on him. He didn’t create the situation but he produced the reaction. Hate is magnetic and once it’s released, it will keep attracting forces to multiply, to intensify, to feed off you. When you go head to head with hate, not only will you lose but there will be no winners. The hate you emit in the atmosphere will be breathed in by someone in the proximity (like I could have today) and domino until the whole day has been poisoned, and eventually until a whole society is.

It never registers with us how casual and mainstream hate can become. It’s everywhere, disguised as ‘the way it is’. One of the sole reasons I have memories on Facebook is to look back on the person I was and be overcome with gratitude that I’m not there anymore. Every status, every update was another complaint with my life. There’s a reason the things, the feelings I hadn’t wanted kept resurfacing; I was throwing them at myself. The energy I was presenting to the universe was tainted and so everything the universe gave me, would be just that. I was so absorbed with hate that I forgot that falling in love with life is always an option. When you fall in love with the intricate details of your life, and the entirety of what you are, there isn’t much room for hate to occupy. I have grown away from hate. I have grown from love. I will not throw hate into a world that has more than enough. Instead I will always seek to be the colour in a black and white world. It doesn’t need to be hate vs love, or good vs evil, or you vs me, or us vs them. Making life a battle gives the negative an advantage. We’re all here, wherever here is for us, and instead of adding bricks to someone’s burden, just give love and be love. Change one thought everyday when that testing ‘one second moment’ materializes. Things can wrong in a second.